Marjorie Taylor Greene’s ‘pedophile’ comments must stop
In our toxic and brain-optional political climate, certain pundits, politicos and random Twitter dingbats have decided to spend the early days of National Child Abuse Prevention Month shooting the label ‘pedophile’ around like a spitball.
It’s outrageous, several steps beyond offensive and utterly indefensible. Though we live in an age when many of the lines you don’t cross have been run over and worn away, this particular trend crosses a line the vast majority of us can still see clearly. And it has to stop.
Senators who plan to vote in favor of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson are being labeled ‘pro-pedophile,’ a malicious assertion grounded in nonsense. People who speak out against the Florida Parental Rights in Education law – called the ‘don’t say gay’ law by opponents – are swiftly declared, by some, to be pedophiles.
From politicians to TV hosts
These horrendous claims are leveled not just by online trolls but by members of Congress and the hosts of television shows viewed by millions.
On Tuesday night, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said: ‘The Democrats are the party of pedophiles.’
I was/am a Democrat and I am on the registry. On one hand MTG’s rhetoric is political fear mongering. The use of the word and its synonyms are an easy way to pander to the political base and promote her image. She sits on no committees so her record is non existent. Republicans have often labeled Democrats as soft on crime and both parties love to pass laws based on fear and rhetoric. The part I find difficult is the cognitive dissonance that occurs when I try to explain that I and most registrants are not pedophiles and that most people’s imagination of my crime is far worse than what it was.
Sorry, this comment is from Tim P. I forgot to put my initial in their. I didn’t want you cause any confusion as I have noticed their is another person who tags their name a only Tim.
When I show people that under federal law nearly any picture of someone under 18 can be determined to be cp, they are shocked. But even some federal websites state that cp can include images of minors who are clothed. Yes, clothed. So, anyone can be convicted of possessing cp by the feds. Remember the old days in the 60s and 70s of many parents taking nude pictures of us as kids and showing our bare bottoms to neighbors as “cute”. Today, that kind of sharing is called “distribution” and can carry a life sentence. Remember the kid on the Nirvana album cover who was pictured nude in a pool? CP? Well, today it could be. So maybe members of congress need to understand how easy it is to be busted for a cp offense and become labeled a pedophile.
Nobody is on the registry for a baby bath picture, a Nirvana album, or a clothed minor.
That’s not how federal child pornography cases work. Go back and review the Federal statutory definition of child pornography if you’re unsure. Or review the most recent study by the US Sentencing Commission on child porn, available on this site.
Also, most people on the registry for child pornography were not tricked into doing so by the government or their spouses.
Registrants are human beings. Having served their sentence, they deserve the same rights as everyone else. That is our basic position. We are not arguing that registrants were always innocent. That position, which applies to a minority, undermines our credibility because it cannot withstand scrutiny.
Nobody here is minimizing cp cases. As a paralegal who works for a defense attorney, I know the guidelines and the most recent report to the Congress on the subject from the US Sentencing Commission. If you think people don’t get arrested in either federal or state cp cases for the types of images described above or that you think the only people who do get convicted is because of vile content too disgusting to describe here, then you are the one who is mistaken. You are the one who needs to educate yourself. My husband served federal time for cp because his former wife uploaded pics of their kids nude in the backyard to a social media site, which triggered a report to the Center for Exploited and Missing Childer who then reported the content to the FBI (just as she wanted to get custody of the kids). He took the rap to get a reduced sentence for simple possession instead of a production and distribution charge that could have carried 25 year sentence. Again, educate yourself.
You changed the subject to pictures of kids nude. That is more serious, and I am relieved that you are no longer claiming that it would be cp if they were clothed (or on a Nirvana album cover).
I realize that your husband made an agonizing decision to plead guilty to possession, and I question why law enforcement did not bother to investigate who uploaded and distributed the material. After all, being a wife and mother normally does not exempt someone from child pornography laws.
In the meantime, I thank you for your dedication and service as a paralegal.
Actually, the Nirvana baby is claiming the image is CP:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/25/entertainment/spencer-elden-nirvana-nevermind-lawsuit-scli-intl/index.html
Will someone end up on the registry for it, probably not. If it happened today, however, I wouldn’t bet against it. SO laws and the registry have passed the point of being weaponized, and they are already being used in that manner.
The Nirvana baby’s claim was dismissed.
You can keep claiming it’s cp if that’s your personal opinion. But that’s not the law.
Great point. Only when we accept our wrong doings or anything/lifestyle that lead us to that wrong doing can we see change within ourselves. How do expect changes in legislation if we are unwilling to change ourselves first? How can I ask for forgiveness when I can’t even forgive myself by minimizing any wrong doings I may have committed? That goes for anything in daily life whenever a mistake is made. When I make a true and honest apology to somone or society, I first accept my behavior that caused the problem and try to make the necessary changes to rectify that problem in order to show true apologies. Minimizing is not accepting my responsibility and can be viewed is some cases as being in denial, therefore and most likely no change will ever come to myself.
I have to disagree with your comment. I met a man while I was in prison here in Michigan who was prosecuted for child pornography because he built his own small chapel with some nude statues of children, none of which depicted any sexual acts. He did possess 1 nude photo of a young boy which he used as a model for the statues, but that was it, and he was convicted on multiple counts. He was placed on the registry for life. I actually tried to tell him that the Supreme Court had since rejected statues as being classified as child porn, but his wife had just died, and he just didn’t want to fight anymore. There are probably others in Michigan who are still on the registry for urinating in public, even though that law has been changed here. And if you are poor and get stuck with a lousy lawyer, mistakes can happen, and the judge isn’t going to automatically fix them for you. I have another friend in a Michigan prison who was prosecuted for production of child porn, because of a story that he wrote about having sex with children. That was a total misapplication of the Michigan law, which was written for photographs or drawn depictions of real children. Yet he was convicted. I could only find 2 similar convictions in the entire country. The one in Ohio was overturned on appeal, because their law simply wasn’t written like that. The other federal case in Pennsylvania was not appealed, because the woman convicted only received house arrest, and didn’t wish to risk a greater sentence. In my opinion, she and my friend were convicted of production of child pornography for nonexistent crimes.
Operationally, pornography is whatever a prosecutor can use to convince a jury that it is, or to induce a defendant to sign a plea. This ambiguity is illustrated by Justice Potter Stewart’s famous “I know it when I see it” comment.
18 USC 2256(B), defines, inter alia, “sexually explicit conduct” as “lascivious exhibition of the anus, genitals, or pubic area of any person.” It is the word “lascivious” that allows courts wiggle room to determine pornography. That term is definitely in the eye of the beholder.
If you want to go down the pornography definition rabbit hole, a good place to start is the Wikipedia article on the “Dost test.” The Dost list is merely a guideline and is neither definitive nor exhaustive. And yes, pornography can include a clothed minor.
If we really want to get technical about pornography, just go to the beach and see all the ‘pornography’ on display there.
You are wrong. Dead Wrong. My husband is on there for swimsuit pictures considered too revealing and “possibly” adolescent. had to take a plea because we didn’t have the resources to keep fighting and take the risk of jail (leaving us without the income to keep our home). A lot of these cases are simply to increase conviction rates, get a detective a notch on his/her belt, and collect federal grant money. Why do you think someone who has visited disney once in their life is kept on the registry? Because the more people on it the more federal dollars granted.
A ‘swimsuit picture’ is not just a swimsuit picture if it reveals the part(s) Ed C enumerates above. And if the subject is under 18, it is child pornography, regardless of whether they appear ‘possibly adolescent.’
Ed C cites multiple sources for the definition of pornography, but it is the statutory definition— 18 USC 2256(B)— that governs whether or not it is a Federal child pornography case.
Re, the point I was trying to make was that within the definitions of 18 USC 2256, what constitutes child pornography (CP) is very subjective. Reading cases over time shows that prosecutors have successively expanded the definitions of words beyond dictionary definitions to make them more inclusive. IMHO, that expansion also goes beyond the intent of the law.
Granted, a CP possession case rarely hinges on a single image or ones that are not of explicit sexual activity. Expanded definitions, e.g. of “production” or “sadistic”, are often used to intimidate the accused into taking a plea, or to justify a sentence enhancement. Prosecutors have argued that copying an image constitutes production of another image. Whether a particular jury would agree is irrelevant. A threat of more serious additional charges may be sufficient to induce a possession plea. The term sadistic now includes any penetration.
None of this is intended to justify or minimize CP possession, but to illustrate the fluidity and subjectivity in the law. Justice Stewart definitely hit that nail on the head.
Forget it – it won’t stop. MTG (and others like her who have been stripped of there Committees) are now useless to the GOP and their own constituents except as the basest fundraising attention-whores they are.
These horrendous claims are leveled not just by online trolls but by members of Congress and the hosts of television shows viewed by millions.
Who says these Politicians and Television personalities aren’t Trolls as well?
In internet slang, a troll is a person who posts inflammatory, insincere, digressive,[1] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as social media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.), a newsgroup, forum, chat room, online video game, or blog), with the intent of provoking readers into displaying emotional responses,[2] or manipulating others’ perception.
….. Wikipedia
It’s sad that so many of those in power perpetuate the myth that “sex offender,” “pedophile,” and “child molester” are all the same thing.
The Term Pedophilia is a Medical Diagnoses per the DSM-3 Guidelines.
—Therefore, this Term is Used incorrectly; Just like the Term, Sex Offender,; it too, is used inappropriately by FAC and others!
I see things a bit differently. I think that the ‘spitballing’ of the term pedophile will tend to ultimately weaken it over time. Maybe soon, everyone will be calling everyone a pedophile and the term will lose its punitive power.
Unfortunately, it’s pretty well established that hate speech works for politicians. It’s the same reason why judges campaign as being “tough on crime,” even though that is not the real job of a judge. The politicians don’t care that the hatred that they spew invited violence against others. They just want votes. I believe that they will all face their own judgement one day, and it won’t be pretty.
Marjorie Taylor Green is just showing her ignorance of the subject. I will add her to my Phase 3 Media Blitz mailing list. This project is a ‘peaceful’ way to achieve the justice we all desire.
Captain…..
..We were Taught in Basic Training, Always Have a Plan of Attack in Process!
Semper Fi and Semper Fortis To You!
You are wrong. Dead Wrong. My husband is on there for swimsuit pictures considered too revealing and “possibly” adolescent. had to take a plea because we didn’t have the resources to keep fighting and take the risk of jail (leaving us without the income to keep our home). A lot of these cases are simply to increase conviction rates, get a detective a notch on his/her belt, and collect federal grant money. Why do you think someone who has visited disney once in their life is kept on the registry? Because the more people on it the more federal dollars granted.
Absolutely correct, JR. Pics of “possibly” adolescents CAN and do make for CP convictions despite what other people think or believe. Those folks need to be educated on this subject.
What we need to do is a sex offender protest in front of her house.